Life in the Word
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statement, and is worthy of our closest examination and most earnest consideration. Why is the Vv ord of God thus spoken of? Why is the extraordinary property of LIFE, or vitality, attributed to it? In what respects can it be said to be a living Word? But the expression "living," as applied to the ·word of God, manifestly means something more than partaking of the kind of life with which we are acq1e1ainted from observation. God speaks of Himself as the "Living God." The Lord Jesus. is the "Prince of Life." (Acts 3 :15.) He announced Himself to John in the vision of Patmos as "He that liveth." Eternal life is in Him. ( 1 John 5 :11.) It is clear, then, that when we read, "The Word of God is living," we are to understand thereby that it lives with a spiritual, an inexhaustible, an inextinguishable, in a word a divine, life. If the Word of God be indeed living in this sense, then we have here a fact of the most tremendous significance. In the world around us the beings and things which we call "living" may just as appropriately be spoken of as "dying." What we call "the land of the living" might better be described as the land of the dying. Wherever we look we see that death is in possession, and is working according to its invariable method of corruption and decay. Death is the real monarch of this world, and we meet at every turn the gruesome evidence and results of the universal sway of him who has "the power of death, that is, the devil" ( Heb. 2:14). "Death reigned" (Rom. 5 :17), and still reigns over everything. The mighty and awful power of death has made this earth of ours a great burying grou11d-a gigantic cemetery. Can it be that there is an exception to this apparently universal rule? Is there, indeed, in this world of dying beings, where the forces of corruption fasten immediately upon everything into which life has entered, and upon all the works of so-called living creatures, one object which is really LIVING, an object upon which corruption cannot fasten
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